If you’re like most users, you haven’t. Yet preventive maintenance should be a part of owning a computer. When kept clean, equipment lasts longer, repair bills are reduced, work spaces look neater, and output is more reliable.

Have you ever looked inside your system case? Dust migrates into pc cases, brought in by cooling fan intake. Dirt accumulates especially fast if user is a smoker, or if system resides in a dirty, dusty environment.

Tech Essentials CPU Filters (#77-001) prevent dust from being sucked into case. A peel-off back lets you easily place one over all your fan intakes.

It’s easy to tell when filter requires changing. After you’ve changed one and seen built-up crud, you won’t want to leave your system unprotected again.

You’re probably thinking "Aw, I don’t need any fancy filters on my intake. I’ll just open case and vacuum it out, or better yet, just blow on it."

Ask any experienced technician if you should "blow out" dust from inside your case.

DON’T!

The dust will settle into slots on your motherboard. Dust will conduct static electricity, and nine times out of ten your motherboard will blow as soon as power is applied. Your experienced technician has already done this, and that’s how s/he knows.

Floppy disks and drives are particularly susceptible. As printed in inaugural issue of The Tech Essential "tiny dust particles can be like BOULDERS when reading media."

Peter Drucker was quoted in Forbes Magazine’s Management New Paradigms “Managing people will become increasingly crucial in developed countries like US. For only competitive advantage developed countries can still hope to have is productivity of their knowledge workers.

The productivity of knowledge worker is still abysmally low. It has probably not improved in past 100 or even 200 years – for simple reason that nobody has worked at improving productivity.”

This is true. However, before there can be an increase in productivity of knowledge workers, process of creativity has to be encouraged.

How creativity can be flourished?

According to Brian Clegg, author of Creativity and Innovation for Managers, there are 4 situations when business creativity is exuded,

1)When determining strategy – whether working in regular strategy meetings or in larger-scale off-site strategy sessions, creativity can be a powerful tool to ensure that future direction is genuinely forward looking and original.

2)When starting a project – at outset of a project many variables are still unsure, and there will inevitably be problems.

3)When devising a new product or service

4)When a specific problem occurs – whether it is industrial action or supply shortages, there are many problems that arise along way. An innovative solution, quickly reached, is in great demand.

Below are some practical guide-posts to foster creativity in your workplace: